Out in East Palestine, Ohio there was a train that derailed carrying multiple hazardous substances on Feb 3rd, but the primary chemical being transported was vinyl chloride. Vinyl chloride is a toxic substance, even at lower levels. It is known to increase one’s chance of liver cancer and it travels by air. Due to the fact that it spread everywhere, the population in East Palestine was put in harms way. Other chemicals were also carried that integrated themselves into the water supplies; killing fish and making the water unsuitable for human consumption for a period of time.

I believe that this situation is atrocious. After the train wreck that occurred in 1918 out in Nashville Tennessee where two passenger trains hit each other head on, the government started regulating trains intensely to ensure it didn’t happen again. Over the years, corporate lobbyists have fought for deregulation to cut budget costs. From making the required amount of workers on a train much smaller, to weakening required brakes to cut costs. In 2014, the Rail Safety Improvement Act was passed which enforced the usage of electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on high hazardous flammable trains. This made trains safer, however, due to lobbying in 2017, this requirement was taken away. The trains didn’t have the stronger brakes, which could lead to a worse crash than if the train were equipped with them.

Alongside this, the train only had three workers. An engineer, a conductor and a person training to become a conductor. This is egregiously low for the fact that there were 150 carts on this train and 20 of them were considered hazardous. The fact that the train neither had the brakes it should have and that the train had so few workers led to this crash. This was preventable in my opinion. Just by having more workers on the train you are making it safer. There really isn’t a way for the train business to hire more people without costs, however with more people less crashes will occur and fewer people will die. When a train derails or crashes, the company loses money in the resources not being transported. It is a necessary cost in my opinion to safen the lives of people. The brakes wouldn’t have stopped the crash in my opinion, but it would have weakened the severity of the situation. I am just disappointed in how deregulated the trains are currently.

This also isn’t a one case issue. There have been other trains since the beginning of the year that have crashed and derailed. According to the Federal Railroad Association, there are roughly 1,000 derailments that happen in a year and this is just one of them. The representation of these crashes are not very prevalent in the news, making crashes seem less common. As more crashes occur, I feel they should be covered more. There needs to be more regulations put in place to help ensure crashes happen less, and when they do happen, they don’t put as many people into harms way. One such way is to require the electronically controlled pneumatic onto hazardous trains again and to require more workers on trains. These might be more costly, but the ramifications of a train crashing cost money and lives.

As this situation continues and more train derailments happen killing and damaging society we might be able to improve. No matter what happens, crashes and derailments will occur. But companies, the government and our society should be working and trying to make these situations less likely.